A few days ago, I tweeted about this amazing video of chef Pepin showing how to debone a chicken galantine/ballotine style. Lo and behold, guess what ended up in my shopping trolley this weekend? :)

However, when I told my husband I was going to try to debone a chicken and stuff it full of yummy things, I thought I’d be met with lots of claps and lickin’ of chops. Instead, I got a rather surly, “Oh what!?! Why can’t you just roast it whole like normal?”

Honestly! You’d think I’d get a bit of gratitude sometimes…

Oh ho ho, how the tables have turned though… this morning, after I very successfully deboned a whole chicken and stuffed it full of yummy things, and our house filled with the most amazing smells of roasting chicken and sausage and sage and onions, I suddenly had a very attentive and supportive husband, who suddenly had nothing but nice things to say. Hmmmm…

I just have to say that this video is absolutely AMAZING! If you’ve never tried to debone a chicken, you’ll be able to (like a pro!) after you watch this video. I’ve inserted it into this post and I seriously urge you to try it.

We had a quarter of a loaf of stale white loaf left so I blitzed it with an onion, some garlic, sage leaves from our garden and mixed it with sausage meat from 3 pork sausages.

Stuffing made with breadcrumbs, sage, onion, garlic and sausage

Even after stuffing the chicken, I had enough mix left to make 6 stuffing balls and 2 stuffed mushrooms. I also boiled up the bones with some bay, carrots, onion and dates and instead of keeping this for stock, turned this into the gravy for today’s roast.

If you have mushrooms lying around, stuff them as well and add them to the roasting tray

The best thing about making Sunday roast is knowing that you don’t have to cook for the rest of the day, or even tomorrow. There’s plenty left over to nibble on later tonight, though that’s pretty unlikely because we are feeling more stuffed than the chicken was!

Dinner’s taken care of tomorrow because there’s still loads of chicken left over, which means I’ve nothing else to do but put my feet up, drink a few cups of tea, catch up with what my fellow favourite bloggers are doing, and just chill.

Chuck all of ingredients into a food processor and blitz this for a couple of minutes. Turn out into a bowl and use your hands to knead them. I prefer a drier stuffing mixture and find the sausage is enough to bind everything together. You can however add an egg if you don’t feel the mixture is holding together well.

Take half of your stuffing mixture and spread it over the inside of your deboned chicken before tying up the chicken. Spread some butter over the top of your rolled chicken, with a sprinkle of sea salt and a dash of paprika.

Turn the rest of the stuffing mixture into stuffing balls, or stuff them into mushrooms – I made 2 stuffed mushrooms because that’s the only 2 mushrooms I had left in the fridge.

Place your chicken galantine, stuffing balls, potatoes and lemons into a big roasting tray. Cover the whole tray with silver foil and roast for 15 minutes.

Remove the silver foil and roast your chicken for another 45 minutes, taking the chicken out to baste every 10-15 minutes.

Place the wings and bones from your chicken and put it into a stock pot and cover the bones with water. Add 2 bay leaves, 1 onion (quartered with the skin on), 4 dates, peelings from 2 carrots (tops and tails too), 1 tablespoon of soy sauce. Boil the bones for the next hour or so (for however long it takes your chicken to cook) then strain and discard the bones, retaining the stock. Keep reducing the stock, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.

After you’ve removed the chicken from the oven and it’s resting, I also squeeze the juice of the roasted lemons into the gravy, and pour any liquid from the resting chicken back into the gravy. In fact, I pour the stock into the roasting tray to deglaze the tray and get every last drop of flavour into the gravy.

Wow, hats off to you for trying such a difficult task of deboning a chicken. Pepin makes it all look so very easy but none the less, I know otherwise. Your dish looks fabulous and stuffed mushrooms- yum!